You're Teaching My Child What? (25 page)

I wonder, do those who teach our kids that being male and female is subjective and changeable apply that approach to other aspects of identity? Does the individual who yearns for his legs to be severed represent a “normal variant”? It seems a fair question to pose.

As extreme as it may be, even the idea of transgenderism is nevertheless consistent with the premise that there are two, and only two, possible identities, male or female. It's blue or pink, Jack or Jill, one box marked “M,” another marked “F.”

But in Genderland this model, the gender binary, is considered false and oppressive. It stands in the way of the right to what's called gender expression. Instead, authorities say, male and female are on a
continuum, with many genders in between. There are endless shades between blue and pink, and a whole bunch of boxes on the application. At different times in life, kids learn, you may feel male, female, both, or neither. And that's just fine.

As Heather Corinna says on scarleteen:

Let's examine this one point at a time.

Now where did
that
come from? Not from John Money: he taught that gender identity (“I am a boy”) is fixed by age three. Not from child development experts: they explain that gender identity is followed about a year later with gender stability (“I will grow up to be a man”), and by age seven at most, by the more sophisticated idea of gender permanence (“I cannot become a girl, even if I wear a dress and lipstick”). As one authoritative psychiatry textbook explains, “Children know that nobody can change gender... [a boy] knows that he will always be a boy until he becomes a man.”
⁵⁶
And not from the eminent psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers who authored the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
. As mentioned above, according to the current edition, a child with a strong and persistent gender dysphoria—the desire to be, or insistence one is, the other sex—is given the diagnosis Gender Identity Disorder.
⁵⁷
It's seen as an emotional disorder.

No matter. Heather rejects these conventions, in company with SIECUS
⁵⁸
and Planned Parenthood.
⁵⁹
“Our gender identity may shift and evolve over time,” says Planned Parenthood. “It may change over the course of your lifetime,” agrees SIECUS. And Advocates for Youth adds: “People can realize their... gender identity at any point during their lives.”
⁶⁰

Gender identity
, Heather states with authority,
changes and grows, sometimes it's clear, sometimes murky.

What do they mean? That while your daughter insists “I'm a girl” at age five, she might also insist “I'm a boy” at fifteen? And you have no reason for concern? Isn't identity by definition a stable sense of self? Stable—you know, as in, stays the same?

This is absurd. It's one thing to propose that boys climb trees because of social expectations; that's a somewhat plausible theory, even though current science has disproved it. It's altogether another to state that often boys yearn persistently to
be
girls—not to play dress-up or help in the kitchen, but to
be
a girl. To have breasts, periods, the whole shebang. And to assert this is nothing to worry about.

The “experts” want teens to think that there's nothing unusual about all this; to the contrary, it's another struggle for freedom and basic personal rights. It's about being yourself, free from arbitrary, unnecessary restrictions. Society dictates strict gender roles, kids are reminded, and some people are dissatisfied with that.
⁶¹
The gender expressions
⁶²
of these individuals “vary from common social expectations;”
⁶³
they don't conform to social norms and want to “redefine traditional notions.”
⁶⁴
They're no different from you or me, it seems, except for feeling uncomfortable with the sex they were “assigned” at birth—as if the “assignment” was a hit or miss process—and this is in reference to genetically, developmentally, and endocrinologically normal children.

To be dissatisfied with society's expectations . . . to fight against norms and restrictions . . . to join with others in the struggle for freedom and rights . . . do you see why young people, especially troubled ones, might be drawn in to gender-bending?

This has real-life consequences. “Luke” Woodward arrived at Brown University a “masculine-appearing lesbian,” with no plans to change his sex. It was not until a trip to Cuba, he reports—where people were shocked to discover he was female—that he began to wonder: Am I a woman? Returning to the United States, he met several transsexuals, and realized there were other options. The summer before his senior year she/he underwent a double mastectomy. No testosterone for Luke yet—he can't afford it. And what about more surgery—as Luke puts it, “down there”? He hasn't decided.
⁶⁵

In my experience as a campus counselor, I know of students like Luke, undergoing dangerous hormone treatments and irreversible surgeries
⁶⁶
after being introduced to the notion of fluid gender on campus or elsewhere. But kids hear about these far-out ideas long before college.

Just a moment, Heather. That's not true. If you're going to use technical terms, use them correctly. Gender dysphoria, defined as “a persistent aversion toward some or all of those physical characteristics or social roles that connote one's own biological sex,”
⁶⁸
isn't just some pesky matter teens must tolerate, like oily skin or annoying siblings. We're not speaking here of, for example, a girl envying boys because they have more athletic opportunities, or don't need to diet or shave their legs. Gender dysphoria is a girl's yearning for a double mastectomy. It's wanting testosterone injections to lower her voice and allow
her to grow a mustache. Gender dysphoria is a disturbance in a child's view of herself. And it's not “really typical”
⁶⁹
at
any
age.
⁷⁰

Heather is in no position to counsel thirteen year old “abnormal” about her gender identity—a complex matter that can involve genetic and medical disorders, as well as psychosocial factors. While Heather touches on these in her reply, she's clearly in over her head; the gist of her advice rests on Genderland ideology—it's all about what feels right to you.

Now that's interesting. In a binary, there are only two possibilities. On or off. Positive or negative. Left or right. Yet Heather's saying gender isn't binary? We're not either male or female?

Nope. That's another falsehood foisted on us by society, says Heather. Like the incorrect assumption that everyone who “menstruates, ovulates, gestates, and lactates” feels like a woman. This view is restrictive, intolerant, and must be challenged.

Reject the binary, kids are told. Gender is “a wide, diverse spectrum.”
⁷¹

Says SIECUS
:
People “have an internal sense that they are female, male, or a variation of these.”
⁷²

Gender Isn't Just Either/Or,
claims a brochure
⁷³
students might find in the nurse's office.

“The truth is....Not everyone looks or feels like one sex or the other,” Advocates for Youth says. “Traditionally, gender has meant either ‘male' or ‘female'.... However, there is really a range of genders, including male and female, but also including genderqueer
⁷⁴
or gender ambiguous, butch (man or woman), femme (man or woman),
transgender . . . and many others.”
⁷⁵
And according to
gURL.com
, the spectrum of gender includes transgender, transsexual, transvestite, and pangender, the latter signifying
people who do not identify with the term male or female. The person may feel they are a mix of either genders, genderless or another gender altogether.
⁷⁶

Did you get that? “A mix of either genders, genderless or another gender altogether.” This is what I mean when I say these people are going over the edge. Some people do suffer from a disorder in gender identity; they deserve understanding, compassion, and treatment. But this goes beyond Roberta becoming Robert.
Another gender altogether
is about becoming someone that's neither Roberta
nor
Robert.

As
gURL.com
states on the hazards of the gender binary:

A summary of today's lesson on being male or female: your identity is based on how you feel; those feelings may shift and evolve; there are more than two genders; assuming otherwise is oppressive and sometimes dangerous.

If anyone is
another gender altogether
, it's Kate Bornstein. When teens go online with questions about being a boy or a girl, they're referred not to
The Female Brain
(2006), not to
As Nature Made Him
(2000), the book about David Reimer, but to Bornstein's
My Gender
Workbook
⁷⁷
(1998). In fact, Heather recommended the book to “abnormal,” the troubled thirteen year old.

With such a rave review, how could I resist? I hopped over to Amazon, and bought the book. That's how
My Gender Workbook
became our final adventure in Genderland.

Like the Cheshire Cat who vanishes and reappears—as a floating head, or just a grin hanging in the air—Kate Bornstein has had many incarnations.

Read carefully, because this is tricky. Kate (formerly Al) was born male and raised as a boy. In adulthood, he “became a woman” for a few years, then “stopped being a woman and settled into being neither.” His (her?) lover, Catherine, decided to “become a man,” David. Kate and David stayed together as a “heterosexual couple.” Their relationship ended when David found “his gay male side.”
⁷⁸

Kate asks, “What a whacky world, huh?”

Given Kate's extraordinary journey, it's not surprising that the subtitle of her (his?) 300-page manifesto is,
How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely.
Now firmly established in her identity as
something else entirely
, Kate hopes to “dismantle the ‘gender system' on the planet as we know it.”
⁷⁹

On the front line of her attack are pronouns. She, he, his, and her don't work: they support the gender binary. The English language needs gender-neutral pronouns. Instead of “he” and “she,” we have “ze” (pronounced zee). In place of “his” and “her” there's “hir” (pronounced here).

Please take this seriously. The culture your child is in certainly does, especially the campus culture, where students who identify as
neither male nor female contribute to campus diversity. Gender neutral housing and bathrooms are available on a growing number of campuses. The health clinic at Wesleyan University no longer requires students to check off M or F; instead they are asked to “describe [their] gender identity history.” Applications to Harvard's business school allow prospective students to identify themselves as one of three genders.
⁸⁰
Smith, an all women's college since the nineteenth century, now has some male alumni—they enrolled as women and graduated as men. Accordingly, students on that campus voted to eliminate female pronouns from the student constitution.
⁸¹
Pronouns such as “she” and “her” were replaced with the phrase “the student.”
⁸²
At four campuses of the University of California,
⁸³
hormones and surgical sex re-assignment are covered by student insurance plans.
⁸⁴
The education at Sarah Lawrence includes the Gender F—k Symposium—“a week long series of programming to challenge gender assumptions, roles and stereotypes.”
⁸⁵
And at the University of Massachusetts, the assumption that everyone is either male or female constitutes “trans-phobia.”
⁸⁶